Symposium to focus on ornament in decorative art

The wall-mounted "Heatwave" radiator, created in 2003 by Joris Laarman, borrows its scrollwork from rococo styling.

Photo By Cooper-Hewitt National Design Mu

The curvaceous rococo form is exemplified in an 18th-century silver candelabrum. Candlelight reflected off the multifaceted surface to illuminated dinner tables, and the ornate design also spoke to the social standing of the owner.

More Information

SAN ANTONIO MUSEUM OF ART MAYS SYMPOSIUM

What: Ornament in decorative arts will be the topic of a daylong seminar titled “From the Opulent to the Mundane: Design and the Decorative Arts.”

Who: Michael Snodin, director of Britain's Strawberry Hill Trust; Sarah D. Coffin of Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York; Elisabeth Donaghy Garrett Widmer, lecturer and curator, and Catherine Pagani, professor of art history and Asian art at the University of Alabama.

When: 9:30 a.m.-4 p.m. Feb. 2.

Where: San Antonio Museum of Art, 200 W. Jones Ave.

Cost: Members, $40; nonmembers, $60; students, $20. Lunch included.

More info: Space is limited. Make reservations at samuseum.org or 210-978-8133.

What does an 18th-century ornately scrolled silver candelabrum have in common with a late 20th-century fat-handled potato peeler?

Design.

The now ubiquitous Good Grips potato peeler that began as a husband's innovative adaptation of a kitchen utensil for his wife's arthritic hands would appear to share nothing with a circa 1740 rococo candelabrum by French silversmith Claude Ballin II.

But both satisfied a need, says Sarah D. Coffin of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York. She is one of the panelists who will discuss design and ornamentation at the 16th annual Mays Symposium on Feb. 2 at the San Antonio Museum of Art.

With intricate swirls and sinuous vines forming the arms and bobeches of the candlestick — a silver polisher's worst nightmare — light reflected brilliantly on the complex surface to make the dinner table sparkle. The elaborate design also reflected the owner's place high on the social scale.

By comparison, the potato peeler with a handle that originally was a rubber bicycle handlebar grip is decidedly spare, but it's no less notable.

“These are all designed objects, and almost all of them have been inspired by this parade of design before them,” says Coffin, head of the product design and decorative arts department at the Cooper-Hewitt.

She cites the fork as another example of enduring design. The same basic handle of the spoon and fork have survived 400 years, since “someone in the 18th century thought about where to put the weight and put your thumb and forefinger to best convey the food to your mouth.”

While styles of forks might vary, the principles of balance don't. “The objects have continued to live, and it all harkens back to designers 400 years ago.”

Coffin focuses her attention most closely on the curvaceous forms of the rococo period, and she sees its definitive S scrolls repeating through the centuries.

In lean times, she says, there is a tendency toward more straight lines, stripping the appearance of excess and making objects easier — and less costly — to produce.

“There's a counterbalance that in times of economic difficulty people want a release. People who have some money may want something that makes them happy, they may want something lively and fun.”

The symposium will help participants connect the past and present in design.

“Everything you use every day is designed in some way,” Coffin says. “Put a new eye that encompasses the past and the present as you look at new objects and look at them with new eyes.”

Today's designers are rarely defined or confined by a particular period.

“There is a great feeling you can draw on all your antecedents,” she says. Forms from the late 17th and early 18th centuries might be reinterpreted in an object as common as a radiator in the case of Joris Laarman's “Heatwave” radiator from 2003. The Dutch designer applied 21st-century technology and innovative thinking to a functional wall-mounted piece that, Coffin says, “looks as if it was sourced from an 18th-century design book in one way.”